Catania, Sicily - 7/13/2011

ciao!

Holy cow I’ve been out here for 2 months! and on my mission for 4! time flies like crazy! it makes me sad though =( Makes me realize how wonderful this opportunity is but in reality how short it is too. Nothing too crazy happened this week other than I lived a dream. I CLIMBED A VOLCANO!!!!!!!!!!!! AND IT ERUPTED TWO DAYS LATER!!!!!! IT WAS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sending you all some really cool postcards I got up there. It’s a huge Mountain and we aren't allowed to go to the top but we climbed other craters and things and had a lot of fun. I even fell down the volcano and slid down a 60 ft slope!! I cut my leg up real nice but it was totally worth it because it was a volcano and now I will always remember it from the scars! 2 days later we were in our apartment and I went outside to check on my clothes (We don’t have a dryer so we have to hang them up outside) and they were covered in black dirt and I was so angry because I thought someone on the floor above us had been nice enough to dump dirt off their balcony onto my drying clothes but my companion quickly explained with excitement that its raining ash! That's ETNA on my clothes! The volcano erupted and it rained ash for about 30 minutes. It’s everywhere still and Etna’s still smoking. It must have been a nice little eruption. But yes it was way awesome however I did not see any lava. I am yet to see lava and then my volcano dream will be complete. =)

As for our investigators everything is the same really. Carlo is getting baptized on the 23rd and will be my first one =) I’m very excited. He’s great. I broke our phone on accident but we got that all fixed, just caused a little difficulty this week but nothing too crazy. This morning I got to wait in line for a couple hours at the immigration office or the "questura" in italiano. It’s like a giant DMV with all its grumpy cold employs huge lines of angry people no air conditioning and it’s full of people who don't speak English or Italian from all over the world. We waited about 4 hours just to get one form, print my fingers, and then found out I have to go to another place tomorrow morning to finish the rest of the process. we waited 4 hours to receive one minute of information. Not fun at all. And I'll probably have to do it again tomorrow =P I’m so excited.

Well that was my week. Looks like you're all having a blast in Hawaii. We are going the summer after I get back right? I hope so! I miss you all and can't wait to hear more from you =) I’m sending some pics of Mt. Etna, a cool gecko we caught and our hand made American flag. Hope you are all safe and having fun. You guys are in my prayers and I miss you all. Have a great week.

-Con Amore

Anziano Hill